Trading words

When Estoreño folks and we got together during our visit, one of the more popular activities was teaching each other words in English, Spanish, and/or Q’eqchi’. We did this with our hosts and with other adults and children. While Carlotta cooked dinner late Saturday afternoon (on the fire pictured above), Pastor Benjamin and I traded words. Here are a few words.

House is casa in Spanish and ochoch in Q’eqchi’.
Tables is mesa in Spanish and mex in Q’eqchi’.
Dog is perro in Spanish and lin tzi sak rix in Q’eqchi.
Car is carro in Spanish and bele bal chich in Q’eqchi’.
Faith is fe is Spanish and pabal in Q’eqchi’.
Holy Spirit is Epiritu Santo in Spanish, which is Santil musiquej in Q’eqchi’.

Benjamin transforms into Miche and Pedro in to Lu’ (in Q’eqchi’).

Noah’s family is Familia de Noe in Spanish and ralal xc’ajol aj Noe in Q’eqchi’ (apparently pronounced ralal shick ajol ah Noe).

Church is iglesia in Spanish and xtenamit li k’acua in Q’eqchi’ (apparently proncounced shetaynamee lee cahquq. The last bit of that – k’acua’ – is God or Dios.

Benjamin and I tripped over a few words. They asked me if I could write anything in Korean and, instead, I wrote Japan (or Nihon) in Chinese characters (or kanji). I tried to explain the origins of the Chinese characters of pictographs (what I drew on my notepad for them pictured below). But I failed because the Chinese character for origin in Nihon (origin of the sun) looks like the root of tree. But I couldn’t get them off a literal interpretation of root – I wasn’t able to communicate a metaphor (root more or less equals origin)..

Early on in the afternoon I confessed that my family and I go at least once a year and worship in a Catholic church in New Albany, where annually a number of Stephanie’s students are participating in their first communions at St. Mary’s, a New Albany Catholic church with ministries for Spanish speakers. I didn’t know how this would go over, since part of many Guatemalan evangelicals’ identity is that they are not Catholic. Benjamin asked me a question in response to this that included the word predicador, which I believe means preach. Was he asking if I preached in the Catholic service in Spanish? I don’t know. Because this could be a sensitive topic, I didn’t want to guess wildly what he was asking. I resolved to ask him to repeat the question when we were around good translators, like Elena or Benjamin, but never remembered to do this. Perhaps next time I’ll remember.)

-- Perry